Fall 2012 movie highlights

They could have played it safe, but maybe there’s nothing to lose. With Hollywood coming out of its weakest box-office summer in two decades, the annual fall serious season is loaded with high-stakes gambles and unsure things. It’s as if the entire film industry had decided to lead with its chin and dare audiences to accept the unexpected. If ever a slate of movies had “PROVE IT” stamped on its forehead, this is it. Check out a sampling of what’s coming to theaters this fall, including “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2,” “Lincoln,” and “Cloud Atlas.”
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Claire Folger/Warner Bros. Pictures

OCTOBER 12

Argo Ben Affleck directed and stars in this dramatic thriller about the time, during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, that the CIA assembled a fake film crew to rescue six wily US diplomats who hid out at the Canadian ambassador’s place in Tehran. The fake movie is called “Argo,” which was the name of the ship Jason and the Argonauts sailed to capture the Golden Fleece. Do you smell an Oscar allegory?
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Chuck Zlotnick/CBS Films

OCTOBER 12

Seven Psychopaths The playwright-turned-filmmaker Martin McDonagh’s first movie since 2008’s “In Bruges” features a generous helping of mounting violence, much of which revolves around a flailing screenwriter (Colin Farrell), a jobless actor (Sam Rockwell), a gangster (Woody Harrelson), and a stolen dog. The rest of the cast includes Christopher Walken, Olga Kurylenko, Tom Waits, and Abbie Cornish.
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Melinda Sue Gordon

OCTOBER 19

Killing Them Softly The great film-titling crisis of 2012 continues with the name of this shoot-’em-up by Andrew Dominik, the writer and director of “Chopper” and “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” (now those are titles!). This new film is based on George V. Higgins’s 1974 heist novel, “Cogan’s Trade”; features Ray Liotta, James Gandolfini, Richard Jenkins, Sam Shepard, and Scoot McNairy; and stars Brad Pitt, sporting a long shotgun and a lot of hair gel for a pompadour.
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Jay Maidment

OCTOBER 26

Cloud Atlas Andy and Lana Wachowski return from their “Speed Racer” fiasco with a wild-looking adaptation of David Mitchell’s time-space jigsaw puzzle of a novel. They’ve hired, among others, Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant, and Susan Sarandon to play multiple roles. What will it mean? What will it say? How will it look? And after we’ve seen him bald, tanned, and goateed, will we ever again see Hanks with the same eyes?
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Fox Searchlight Pictures

OCTOBER 26

The Sessions Some of us are prone to wonder, “Whatever happened to Helen Hunt?” Like, she won that Oscar, made the execrable “Pay It Forward,” and that terrible, terribly popular Nancy Meyers movie, then kind of vanished. (We’re not blaming her, mind you.) Anyway, she appears to be back, playing a sex surrogate hired to show a man (John Hawkes) with an iron lung a good time. It’ll be nice to see her again, even if this movie, which was a real crowd-pleaser at Sundance, seems like the reason God invented the Academy Award.
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AP Photo/Disney

NOVEMBER 2

Wreck-It Ralph Disney really hopes you’ll think of this computer-animated frolic as “Toy Story” for the video-game generation. A hulking baddie from a classic arcade game, the title character (voiced by John C. Reilly) wants to be a hero, so he escapes to a first-person-shooter war game and unleashes comic mayhem. Additional voices provided by Sarah Silverman, Jane Lynch, and Jack McBrayer.
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David James/DreamWorks Pictures

NOVEMBER 9

Lincoln Will audiences want to watch a movie about a great US president the week after the end of a less-than-inspiring campaign season? There’s no disputing the film’s pedigree, probably the year’s finest: Directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Tony Kushner (from Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book), starring Daniel Day-Lewis and featuring serious thesping and facial hair from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jared Harris, Tommy Lee Jones, David Strathairn, and many more. Focusing on Lincoln’s last four months in office, it may be an earnest (i.e., dull) civics lesson. Or it may be so good we’ll be too depressed to leave the theater.
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Francois Duhamel/Columbia Pictures

NOVEMBER 9

Skyfall“Welcome to the new MI6,” says the new Q (Ben Whishaw) to the not-so-new Agent 007 (Daniel Craig). The producers hope you’ll agree. James Bond film #23 hopes to shake off the dust of 2008’s meh “Quantum of Solace” and return to the cruel charisma of “Casino Royale,” the 2006 reboot that introduced Craig’s take on the storied spy. Sam Mendes (“American Beauty”) directs, and Judi Dench’s M has more to do than usual, but the real danger to Craig and Bond is a scene-stealer named Javier Bardem as arch-villain Raoul Silva.
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Laurie Sparham

NOVEMBER 16

Anna Karenina According to the Internet Movie Database, there have been 22 earlier film and TV versions of Tolstoy’s classic novel. Now it’s Keira Knightley and Joe Wright’s turn to have a crack at it. The actress and her director — who teamed memorably on “Pride and Prejudice” (2005) and “Atonement” (2007) — are going for Oscar-baiting opulence and high melodrama if the trailers are to be believed, with Jude Law a gruff Karenin and indie dreamboat Aaron Johnson a foppish Count Vronsky.
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Andrew Cooper/Summit Entertainment

NOVEMBER 16

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 When we left Bella (Kristen Stewart) at the end of “TTS:BDP1,” our heroine had finally achieved her life goal of becoming a vampire and endured a pregnancy designed to terrify millions of teenage girls into permanent chastity. Fans of the series — both Stephenie Meyer’s atrociously written novels and the increasingly silly movies made from them — will finally find closure. Tabloid junkies obsessed with Stewart’s off-screen affair will salivate. And the rest of us moved on long ago.
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Rhythm & Hues

NOVEMBER 21

Life of Pi Yann Martel’s out-of-nowhere 2000 bestseller about a boy, a lifeboat, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker wouldn’t seem to be a natural for the movies, but Ang Lee (“Brokeback Mountain,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) obviously isn’t one to shrink from a challenge. There may be a surprising amount of realism — and maybe a few Oscars — in this offbeat inspirational fable.

The Weinstein Company

NOVEMBER 21

Silver Linings Playbook The suddenly ubiquitous Bradley Cooper and the equally so Jennifer Lawrence play a pair of cautious lovebirds coming back from mental illness. There’s dancing involved, and supporting performances from Robert De Niro and Jackie Weaver (“Animal Kingdom”) as Cooper’s parents, not to mention an appearance by the not-at-all ubiquitous Chris Tucker (the “Rush Hour” films). Most promising of all, it’s written and directed by David O. Russell, who’s hopefully still on a roll after “The Fighter.”
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Nicola Dove

DECEMBER 7

Hyde Park on Hudson Bill Murray plays Franklin D. Roosevelt (two names that have never previously appeared in the same sentence) in this based-on-fact film that intertwines FDR’s affair with a distant cousin (Laura Linney) and the first visit to the United States by a reigning British monarch, King George VI. “The King’s Speech” was a hit. Why not “The King’s Picnic”? Olivia Williams plays Eleanor Roosevelt.
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AP Photo/Warner Bros.

DECEMBER 14

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” Could J. R. R. Tolkien have suspected all that would follow from that sentence? Two more “Hobbit” movies, for starters, after this one. Peter Jackson directs. Martin Freeman is Bilbo. Various familiar faces return from the “LotR” movies: Ian McKellen as Gandalf; Cate Blanchett as Galadriel; Hugo Weaving as Elrond; Elijah Wood as Frodo (not that all of them are in the book). Oh, and a crucial familiar voice, too: Andy Serkis as Gollum.
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Amour Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant play a happily married couple in their 80s. Isabelle Huppert is their grown daughter. A health crisis for Riva poses a test for all three. Those are three mighty fine actors — and they’re working with a mighty fine director, Michael Haneke.

AP Photo/Paramount Pictures

DECEMBER 21

Jack Reacher Tom Cruise plays Reacher, the hero of Lee Childs’s series of crime novels, who’s investigating five sniper killings. Also in the cast are Rosamund Pike, Robert Duvall, Richard Jenkins, and Werner Herzog (!). Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie.
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Suzanne Hanover/Universal Pictures

DECEMBER 21

This Is 40 Writer-director Judd Apatow offers what’s billed as a “sort of sequel” to “Knocked Up.” That film’s secondary leading characters, Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann), are the focus here. Watch for Albert Brooks, as Rudd’s father, and Lena Dunham, in her first post-“Girls” performance.
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